Eating dirt in the South

I made edible grass last night using shredded coconut and green food coloring. It was for Paolo’s class project; they are studying soils. In a clear cup they are making dirt layers out of two kinds of chocolate pudding, Oreo cookie crumbs, brown sugar, including gummy worms and, of course, green grass on top.
Some days, I would like to trade jobs with my seven-year-old.

Summer Runs On and On

You are belatedly on notice that school is out. Last summer this was a bad thing, as we socked Paolo away into a crappy daycare that closed halfway through the summer, and then begged our way into a decent summer program that he didn't enjoy because all the kids had made friends already, and I suspect he spent much of the day sitting in the corner, not to mention it was located allllllll the way across town, which took even longer to drive than it takes to read this sentence. This year things are going much better due to some better parental planning on our parts, and a better attitude on Paolo's part.

Speaking of Paolo's flaws (and I can admit he has flaws, even though Sam says I'm so protective of my children that if they killed someone, I'd help them hide the body, which is completely untrue, because they always find the body, so you have to make it look like an accident), he had a rough year with his first-grade teacher, due in part to his lack of focus. The other part of the year's difficulty was due to his teacher being a mean, old hag. What follows is an example of the efforts I made to impress upon Paolo the importance of concentrating:

Paolo, your teacher says you were not paying attention in class today. You didn't get your work done, and you had to make it up at recess.

[Deep sigh] Yeah.

Did you like doing work when all the other kids were playing?

No.

So next time your teacher tells you to do your work or you'll have to miss recess, you'll remember what that felt like, right?

[Pause] Um ... yeah.

Do you have any idea what I just said?

Yes!

....

No! [explodes with laughter] No, Mama, I have no idea what you just said.

Shortly thereafter, I gave up.

Apologies for the egregious run-on sentences today. I don't know what came over me, unless I'm always this way and don't even realize it. Maybe my endless droning is why Paolo has the attention span of a goldfish. Perhaps the poor kid shuts down out of self-preservation, because if he truly listened to every word I said, his frontal lobes would tie themselves into knots.

Graduation Day

Today is Paolo's last day of Kindergarten. Yeah, on a Thursday. That's not very helpful to working parents. As usual, Sam and I will split Friday hours with me taking the afternoon shift. Since I'll take a half-day off this week, I couldn't take off Tuesday morning to ATTEND PAOLO'S GRADUATION. Minor event, right? Actually, it was a very casual non-cap-and-gown affair, so my heart only splintered into 42,000 pieces.

When I got home Tuesday night, my darling husband plugged our videocamera into the TV to show me the footage he was able to get while sitting in a miniature chair and holding a squirming todder. I watched several short clips of the kids getting their diplomas while the teacher read what each child wants to be when he/she grows up.

Then it was time for the slideshow. My jaw dropped when I saw the video length in the corner of the screen: over 11 minutes. Sam had recorded the entire show. As pictures of the class began cycling, I got all choked up. It wasn't the toothless grins that did me in; it was the understanding that my husband had gone to such trouble to make me feel like I hadn't missed anything. He knew, without any conversation, how much it killed me to miss this milestone and, as usual, he knew how to make it better.

Less than two minutes into the slideshow, Luca picked up the videocamera and deleted the video. Irretrievably. A little piece of Sam's soul died, along with the last vestige of hope I had that Luca will end up anywhere other than jail.

Speaking of life prospects, would you like to know what Paolo wants to be when he grows up? A dad. Barring that, a helicopter driver. I told him I can't vouch for which would be more exciting, but I know which is more important.

Failing my children in new and exciting ways

I have not had a particularly strong week as a parent. At the park on Sunday, I sat Luca on my lap to go down a slide, and his foot caught and twisted up behind him. He didn't cry much when it happened, and it wasn't until after his nap and late lunch that I realized he couldn't walk. Sam was on a bike ride, so I left a note saying I'd taken Luca to the Emergency Room because something was wrong with his leg. Due to the brevity of my message, Sam showed up an hour later looking ten years older. In my mind, the note clearly referred to the slide incident, which I had not stopped thinking about since it happened. See, it's actually a common accident in which a kid sitting on his mom's lap gets his foot wedged between her and the slide and breaks a leg. I kept obsessing because I KNOW better, and I HAD made sure that Luca's legs were on top of mine when we started. However, in Sam's mind, Luca had contracted flesh-eating bacteria and was facing amputation.

Luckily, the X-ray showed no fracture, so we were sent home with a diagnosis of sprained knee. Luca adapted pretty well: he reverted to crawling for a couple days and is now walking again with just a little hitch in his giddy-up.

The injury done to Paolo this morning was emotional, but no less painful, according to my hypercritical, I mean helpful, husband. Paolo realized in the car when we'd just about reached school that he was still wearing his pajama bottoms. Instantly I remembered that he'd joined me in the bathroom half-dressed to use the potty, and then we'd brushed teeth together and gone downstairs. He'd never returned to his room to change his bottom half and, hence, still had on Batman pj bottoms. I tried to laugh about with him, but he was really upset. I made a snap decision to get him to school on time and bring his pants later. Even though no one would EVER guess his solid black pants were pajama bottoms, Paolo was mortified, and I had to push him into his classroom, promising to be right back.

When I explained to Sam why I was dashing in and out of the house with a pair of pants, he pinpointed that moment - the moment I heartlessly shoved our son into a mocking classroom - as what was sure to become Paolo's first memory, one of utter humiliation. What I SHOULD have done, according to Paolo's father and Paolo's teacher, was come back home, let Paolo finish dressing, and be late to school.

You know you haven't had your best week when the highlight is that you didn't break your kid's leg.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

I ran into Sam at home yesterday when I dropped off my Valentine’s party booty, so we got to eat lunch together. It began pleasantly, just two adults eating and conversing, until Sam finished his pizza and reached for the cookies.

"What are you doing?"

"I want a cookie. You said there are extras, so let me have one."

"No! You can’t open any of them."

"Why not? Give me a cookie."

"I can’t carry in open containers of food to the party. It’ll look like I found these in the parking lot, or worse, like I had an unstoppable case of the munchies from hitting the bong all night. THE SEAL MUST NOT BE BROKEN! You must be crazy, thinking I’m going to walk in there with used food."

"You’re really not going to give me a cookie, are you? Okay, I'm feeling a lot of anger towards you right now."

There the cookies sat, pristinely, all day and evening until dessert, when I had essentially the same conversation with Paolo, with Sam chiming in, “Paolo, she won’t do it, bud. You’re not getting a cookie. Your mama is MEAN.”

Which brings us to this morning, as I triumphantly carried the stack of unopened boxes of cookies into Paolo’s school. It was a delicate balancing act, as I was also carrying Luca, who picked at the stickers sealing the boxes until he had peeled them all off.

Please keep your VD to yourselves.

My dear friend Melissa sent me an email today with “VD” as the subject. I think it illustrates my romantic nature that “VD” instantly expanded to venereal disease in my mind. I thought it was kind of a personal thing to share with someone, even one’s hetero-lifemate. She was referring to Valentine’s Day, of course, and the teeth-grinding lameness of her co-workers receiving flowers two days prior to the ridiculous “holiday.” I do hope her giddy coworkers realize those flowers came early because the senders are cheap. You pay less for flowers if you have them delivered prior to the 14th, especially when it falls on a Saturday. That’s right, suckers, your boyfriend/husband/mom/stalker doesn’t love you enough to pay for weekend delivery.

I know the single girls out there are starting to feel down and hating themselves for it, because they don’t want to care about Forced-Display-of-Affection Day. But they do care, if only a teensy bit, because they’re human, and humans like chocolate. Affection is also nice, especially when it comes in a box with paper-lined compartments. I’m talking about good chocolate, like imported from Europe, made by fairies in a magic glen, with all-natural ingredients, not the corn syrupy turds they make in America.

I’m not in the single-girl camp; I’m in the mother camp, but we also have good reason to despise this trumped-up occasion. I’m lucky this year in that Paolo is old enough to address his own cards, and Luca is too young to exchange them. However, I just blew my lunch break (and $16.00) at the grocery store agonizing over what treats to buy for my sons’ parties at school tomorrow. There were two ten-foot-long tables in the bakery piled high with pink-frosted goodies. I’d volunteered to bring cookies for Paolo’s class of 22, so that narrowed my choices down to seven varieties. All the cookies come 10 in a box, so I had to overbuy by eight because I certainly couldn’t underbuy by two.

I volunteered to bring fruit for Luca’s party because I’d just finished ripping out the soul of his afternoon teacher for feeding him candy and chips. Donating cupcakes seemed like hypocrisy. I decided on grapes, which I’ll just need to wash and cut in half.

And THEN I had to grab something for my book club meeting tomorrow night. It’s couples night, but my Valentine will be home with the boys. Since I was in produce, I grabbed a pound of strawberries. That’s appropriate, no? I’ll just need to wash and slice those, as well. I have my Valentine’s homework cut out for me, and I still have to plan a nice meal and dessert to make for my family.

I give and I give. But what about me? What about my European gourmet chocolate needs?

One for the Manor and One for the Church

Paolo is making great strides with reading. I don’t know who is more excited by his progress, him or me. He brought home his mid-year report card, and I am really pleased with it. The only suggested area of improvement is counting. He counts to 59, but then starts over at 40. Let’s see, he is five, he is in kindergarten, and HE COUNTS TO 59!! That sounds alright to me. He also got to bring home his journal, which provides real insight to the things and events that are important to him. Most of the journal is superheroes and villains, and Paolo jumping on furniture, but there are pages devoted to visiting grandparents and picking up the baby at the hospital. In hindsight, I’m starting to think it was a cop-out not explaining to Paolo that I was carrying the baby. He thinks we hopped in the car and went to get a baby like it was a gallon of milk we needed for breakfast.

Paolo got a new journal at school for the second half of the year, and we like to ask him what he is putting in it. Sometimes we suggest things, like how he’ll probably want to mention that Mama took him to see the Wizard of Oz musical. (What he actually wrote was that he saw his classmate at the theatre. Mama is chopped liver, apparently). Last night during dinner, Sam asked what he had written in his journal that morning, and Paolo said he’d written that he loves his mama. It felt like the world stopped and my heart exploded, but not in a gross way, like an explosion of happy confetti. Does that make any sense? All I know is I want to bottle that memory of my son’s sweet voice saying he loves me and carry it around for the rest of my life.

Luca, on the other hand, still isn't talking. I’m taking it personally. He is not a complete dolt, however. He has mastered the stairs, as well as the slide he got for Christmas. He is still drooling like a Great Dane, and it bugs me because there is no reason for it. He has all of his teeth except for his two-year molars, and none of his peers at daycare soak six bibs a day. I googled excessive drooling and, sure enough, found all sorts of things to worry about, like retropharyngeal abscesses, peritonsillar abscesses, tonsillitis, oral-motor disorder, and autism. But then everything points to autism. These days, everybody’s kid is autistic somewhere on “the spectrum.”

I’m so over autism. Parents worry themselves sick over SIDS, and just when a child outgrows that danger, we have to start worrying about autism. And the beauty of that peach of a disorder is that we still don’t know what causes it; we only know the numbers are skyrocketing. Thanks to the alarming rise in autism, the disorder has become mainstream, with new methods of diagnosis and treatment, and more and better resources for autistic children and their families. I am not comforted by the knowledge that my kid will have lots of company if he’s hit with the dummy stick. I want my kids to be perfect, or at least free of major defects. It takes a special person to care for a special needs child. I am not special. So I really wish my 16-month-old would start talking and quit drooling. I thought the term “drooling” was gross until I ran across “salivary incontinence.” Gack.

Post Postscript

Me: How did Paolo’s drop-off go today? Did you look for the missing library book?

Sam: I didn’t get a chance to talk to his teacher about the book because she had something to say to me. Apparently, yesterday at lunch Paolo would not sit down and stop shouting until they threatened to call his dad.

Me: Really? Our Paolo?

Sam: Yeah. So after I gave Paolo a talking-to while the teacher watched, I didn’t feel like bringing up the library book.

Me: Wow. I wonder why they threatened to call you. Why wouldn’t they say they were going to call me?

Sam: Because I’m the parent that walks him all the way to the classroom. You just drop him off at the front door like a stray dog.

Postscript

Sam: I read your post this morning. That’s some heavy stuff.

Me: Yeah, it really came out of left field. Do you think I did the right thing?

Sam: No, of course not. The boy is five years old. You can’t just drop him off at the front door. Jesus, he’s in Kindergarten, not junior high.

Me: Oh, hell. I was trying not to hover. It’s not like I abandoned him in the parking lot; he only had to walk down the hallway.

Sam: Yeah, well, he left his take-home folder in his backpack instead of returning it to his teacher and his library book is missing. Just because he asks for something doesn’t mean he’s ready for it.

Me: Well, when you put it that way…

Sam: No more of this front door business.

Me: Alrighty then. So much for my moment.

I guess a hug is out of the question.

This morning in the car, Paolo asked to walk to school by himself. He explained that he had seen other kids walking by themselves and wanted to do it himself, too. After all, he is in Kindergarten. But those are bigger kids walking without their parents, I protested. Not true, he replied. He has seen his good friend Lily on her own, and she’s in his class. I took a few deep breaths while his request for independence shaved little pieces off my heart. “How about I walk you to the front door, and you walk all the way to your classroom by yourself?” He agreed we had a deal.

As I escorted him to the building, I reminded him to hang up his coat and backpack and stow his lunchbox once he got to his room. He silently let me ramble on, for once not snapping that he KNOWS. It’s not that I thought for a moment he might get lost or forget any step of the routine he’s been performing since August. It’s just that I wanted to do it with him, no, FOR him. I like to see him seated, settled, safe before I walk away from him. Then I realized, those small gestures of mine, I’ve been making them for me. But letting go, this is what I’m doing for him.

Thursday OverThink #1, courtesy of Paolo's Elementary School

The perpetrator of the very first Thursday OverThink is not me, which is odd because I felt like I was in the running. We’re flying down to Florida next week to visit my family, which means Paolo will miss four days of school. I mentioned his impending absence to his teacher, who told me it wasn’t a big deal because he’s doing really well, but I would need to send a note to the office. Remember those notes your mom scribbled on the back of an envelope for you to take to school on the day AFTER your absence? This is how I roll:

To Whom It May Concern:
Please excuse Paolo’s absence from school Monday, November 17 through Thursday, November 21. We are traveling to Florida to visit family. I have already spoken with Ms. C. about take-home assignments and lessons to review with Paolo during his absence. Please contact me should you have any questions or concerns.
Best regards,
Paolo’s Excruciatingly Proper Mother

Imagine my surprise when I was informed that, because the absence was greater than three days, I had to fill out a special form for the principal to review. The form is printed on legal-size paper, stating the regulations governing excused vs. unexcused absences from school, and requiring inordinate amounts of information from me. For example, if the absence is for a family trip, state with detail the educational opportunities that will be afforded to your child. Attach additional pages if necessary. I kid you not.

I considered picking one of the established excused absence reasons, and just lying, but I’m too honest and too scared of getting caught. So now I wait to see if the principal decides to excuse the absence. I’m not confident of my chances, considering the form was supposed to have been submitted two weeks ago. Why is it is such a big deal to have the four days excused? Because a child who has four unexcused absences in a semester will not receive credit for the semester.

Along with the stress of getting the family packed up and flying halfway across the country with two children, I am now sweating whether my son will flunk out of kindergarten. Elementary School, lighten up. You have overthought your attendance policy.

I’m going to shrink him down and put him in my pocket.

Paolo has been a worry lately. He underwent surgery to remove his adenoids the week before last; a relatively simple procedure with a short recovery time. Only he didn’t recover. He felt worse each passing day, and I called his surgeon on day five (his first day of school). The doctor had us bring Paolo in immediately and then sent him for an X-ray to look for spinal cord inflammation, a rare but serious complication from the surgery. After a tense day and a half, it turned out Paolo’s spinal cord was not infected, and he does NOT in fact have the one-in-ten-thousand syndrome we thought he might have, which can lead to paralysis or death. "Tense" isn't really the right word. Is there a word for when your brain starts to process that your child might truly be in trouble and you feel like you're at the bottom of a dark, heavy ocean breathing through a straw? It felt like that. Paolo finished his 10-day regimen of mega-dose antibiotics, and he feels great. Sam and I are still surfacing. It takes a while for the stain of such strong panic to wash off completely.

The first week of kindergarten was overshadowed by the specter of Paolo’s illness, so this second week feels more like a celebration. Tuesday I dropped him off, which was a big disappointment to him because he wants to ride bikes to school with his daddy every day. I’m losing ground to supercool dad, but the baby still likes me more. Sam went to pick Paolo up at 3:00, but Paolo never came to the designated pick-up spot. Sam watched other kids meet their waiting parents until he was the only one left. He went down to Paolo’s classroom, but it was empty. He started checking other rooms until a teacher, whose room he poked his head in, asked to help. She suggested Paolo might be with the kids at the car pick-up, so Sam headed outside. Paolo wasn’t there, and he wasn’t on the playground.

Just then, the helpful teacher caught up with Sam to tell him Paolo had been transferred to another school. Mystery solved! She explained that Paolo was one of the students who got bussed across town due to the overcrowding in the kindergarten classes. At this point, Sam had had enough. With dwindling calm, he assured this woman that Paolo attends THIS school. He was dropped off HERE this morning. He is NOT a transfer, and she was WRONG. She continued to argue with him and called over a male teacher for backup, because the intimidating father with a baby on his hip wouldn’t leave without his son. Finally, someone found Paolo’s teacher, who had mistakenly sent him to after-school care. Paolo was in the gym about to have a snack with the other kids, having no idea that he’d been lost for half an hour.

Paolo recently got his own library card, and he couldn’t be prouder. He carried it around for hours until he decided to store it in his Transformers wallet. As I watched him slip the bright yellow card snugly inside the pocket, I wished I could do that with him: fold him up and keep him close to me, away from harm. We gave him to a doctor, and he ended up with a scary infection. We gave him to a teacher, and she misplaced him. I want him to grow, I want him to experience life unencumbered by apron strings, but sometimes I want him back.

Elementary school is the bee's knees.

Let me get this straight: after five years of crippling daycare registration, tuition, and supply fees, I can leave my son here with you for free. I owe you zero dollars, yes? And he’ll be supervised by people with education degrees, his teachers won’t change every other week, and the school will not pack up and move to another town. Sounds marvelous. Here, have my kid. Nope, I don’t need a moment to collect myself.

Paolo, welcome to Kindergarten. Be good, hang loose, see you at 3:00.

Holding it Together, but Barely

Great changes are afoot, and many things are conspiring to keep me on my toes. I do not like to be on my toes. I like my feet to be planted solidly, nay, bolted down with metal rivets to giant steel girders of non-change.

I finally registered Gianluca at a new daycare after weeks of deliberation. I had it narrowed down to two, and the last tour I went on clinched it. The director actually thought she could intimidate me. She began by telling me what would get me and my child kicked out of the school; she danced around my question about staff turnover by admitting her reputation for being insanely strict; and closed by saying her program was too good for the state of Arkansas, so she had no intention of meeting state guidelines to be labeled a quality-approved school. Check this, Frau Crazystein, if I’m giving you my kid, I’M the one telling YOU how things are going to be. YOU will fear ME, and you will jump to meet MY standards. That’s how this works. The daycare I chose is moving to a newly constructed building, which is good because their current building needs to be razed. They’re hoping to move at the end of this week, but aren’t sure. So I don’t know where Gianluca’s first day will be yet.

As for Paolo, his pedo-partial broke again, so he’s missing his front teeth until a week after he starts school. (I’ll skip over the dentist visit where they took an impression of his teeth while he gagged and screamed and I cried, and then they had to do it again.) Poor Paolo is also scheduled for surgery this Wednesday to remove his adenoids and put in another set of ear tubes. So it’s really helpful that his school moved its Kindergarten popsicle party to Wednesday evening, because I’m sure he’ll be in the mood to socialize. Maybe he could get a Vicodin pop, and share with his mama. I also just found out he is starting school next Monday, not next Wednesday as we were told at registration. I had to call the school to find this out. I guess this is not information that merits distribution.

Paolo is over-the-moon excited about starting Kindergarten and soccer next week. He’s got his school supplies, a new backpack and lunchbox, and the cutest pair of soccer cleats in existence. He’s also fortunate to have a dad who remains unstressed by all this upheaval and kindly uncurls his mama’s fingers every night.